The Constitution of the United States clearly lays out that due process applies to “all persons”, not just citizens. The Trump administration is clearly trying to challenge that with Abrego Garcia case as they sent him, a legal resident, to a prison in El Salvador alleging that he is a member of a Venezuelan gang without giving him due process. Aside from whether or not there is evdience to substantiate that, it doesn’t matter because he is owed his time in court. The Trump administration clearly does not care even when instructed by courts at multiple levels to return him. Just today the president of El Salvador stated that, after a meeting with Trump at the White House, that he would not send back Mr. Garcia.

This is clearly a test case to see what Mr. Trump can get away with, and if the Supreme Court does not stand up to this then we are in trouble as a country. Equal protection of the law applies to everyone within the borders of the United States, not just those who are citizens of the U.S. If that truly goes away, then who can spare us from the arbitrary whims of whatever man or woman happens to occupy the presidency? We already have a president who is essentially immune from facing prosecution. Congress and the courts need to step it up, or the consequences will be dire. Congress should pass an immigration reform law that will both secure the border, and give some protections to people who are here legally, and for those who are undocumented, send them to the back of the line so they wait their turn along with those trying to get in legally. We should also be making it easier to enter the country legally as we need more people, not less. Also, making it easier to enter the coutnry legally and more difficult to enter illegally will incentivize people outside to wait for legal entrance. The Courts must speak firmly to bind the President to adhering to the rule of law and follow due process. If the President refuses, then Congress has the duty to impeach Trump and remove him from office.

I wish I could nuance this and offer something to assuage the alarm, but in this instance, I don’t see much nuance here. Either due process and equal protection apply to all, or they apply to none.

This week Trump implemented his tariffs universally at 10% and much higher tariffs than that on some countries in particular. Although a few Republicans protested, the vast majority have been deathly silent. The party that claimed to stand for economic freedom has been completely silenced as they have been bound to their leader. I take no delight in this as I wasa a Republican because I believed (and still do) in the freedom of the individual to pursue their lot in life as much as possible as they see fit in both the economic and civic spheres of life. It became apparent several years ago that the GOP had abandoned these commitments, and has wholly embraced power to implement reactionary policies and just plain old authoritarianism.

Free trade is a critical part of economic freedom. Not only does it tie the world together in largely peaceful ways, it is the freedom of people to purchase goods and services from wherever they wish to. It also allows different countries to more efficiently allocate resources to industries that it has a higher degree of ability to specialize in. To be a service based economy is not a bad thing, and America makes a lot of things, but it is mostly high-end things like jets, and other expensive goods. We should not wish to go back to making textiles and paper. We aren’t getting screwed over by other countries because of trade, but we are richer overall for the trade environment we have lived in for 80 years. As Tyler Cowen has noted, we will be poorer and have a future with few and more expensive choices. We did this to ourselves.

I finally finished my first book of the year. It’s been a busy year so far and on top of that busyness, I’ve piled too many substack and RSS subscriptions that have kept me more occupied than I would ideally like. I’ve been trying to rethink my intake of those forms of reading to make more space for books and I’m aiming to achieve a better balance there.

The book I did finish is one I started before the election actually. It was placed on pause for a while and then I was able to take it up again to be able to mark it complete. That book is “The Dead Zone” by Stephen King. “The Dead Zone” asks the question, what if someone woke up from a coma and was able to see the future, but only when they touch another person or something someone had touched? In my opinion, the what if question is the best way to read a Stephen King story. He himself has said in his book On Writing that that is how he conceives of ideas for his stories. What if a young teenager who was picked on also had powers of telekinesis? What if there was a cemetery that could bring someone back to life? What if there was a new superflu that raged across the world leaving only a handful of survivors who were immune?

In “The Dead Zone” Johnny Smith is a teacher who drops off his date and her home and then proceeds to get into a car accident and spends five years in a coma. The story spans the decade of the 1970’s and in the book we see Johnny come to grips with a girlfriend that got married, a vietnam war that came to an end, a president that was disgraced and resigned due to watergate, and much more. He also has a mother who goes slightly crazy with fundamentalist religion, but could also have her own slight powers of prophecy.

Johnny goes on to become a sensation who can peer into peoples' futures and prevent tragedy from happening. On occasions he can also see into a person’s past or pressent. At the same time that this is happening, there is a serial killer in the town of Castle Rock, Maine and a ruthless and charismatic politician who is rising in a house district in New Hampshire. Johnny has to navigate these and other difficulties that no one else would need to deal with, and him paying a heavy cost for doing so.

It’s actually one of his deeper books in my opinion. We get to see Stephen King work out what exactly it would do to someone who has these powers. What kind of toll would tha take on their emotional health, their physical health, and their relationships? There are some minor holes that one can identify in the logic of the story and like many of his books, he has a little bit of trouble sticking the ending, but overall to me this is an enjoyable read and I recommend it to anyone who wants a good mysterious and thrilling yarn.

For years I have struggled with prayer. What it really boils down to is a version of the problem of evil, and almost entirely involves intercessory prayer. There are millions of people around the world who live in absolute poverty. It’s not just that they live on little, but they live on nothing. They have kids who are dying of starvation or incurable (or curable) diseases. They aren’t healed or fed. Wives see their husbands and mothers their sons go off to war and killed for territorial gain or the glory of the tyrants. And even in our first world societies, people see loved ones die of cancer, killed in accidents or die on the operating table. In all of these some having prayers offered, and others not, but in all of these that end, not being answered. Yet so many Christians will thank God for answering prayers for getting money to pay for their apartment, or something trivial. They will praise God for cancer cured in a loved one, while someone else’s child dies because their parent had Aids and passed it on to them. Why should God honor my intercessory prayer when another person’s prayer goes unanswered, or someone dies that no one is praying for? None of it seems fair or right. In most cases I find it next to impossible to pray of my own volition. If someone asks me, I will say a prayer because I want to honor their request.

Yes I can at times doubt God’s existence or the resurrection. But those things don’t trouble me like the above does. Frankly, I find both doctrines easier to believe, than intercessory prayer. I read scripture almost every day, and offer various forms of prayers. However, asking God for things and hoping/expecting them to be granted just doesn’t strike me as right. Maybe someday I will find a way to reconcile this inner tension within my faith. For me this is actually less about belief in a loving God. The teachings of Jesus and the demonstration in his own life do actually square that circle for me.

Never Trump conservatives and liberals are often accused of having Trump Derangement Syndrome. This being the case where in Trump supporters eyes, Trump opponents simply don’t like Trump or some policies because they can’t seem to get past the bad orange man whose only problem is the inability to put his phone down. His talk simply prevents those who are opposed from seeing how wonderful Trump actually is.

Those of us opposed to Trump know that that isn’t the case. There are far worse things about Trump than simply his diarrhea of the mouth. However, almost 10 years into Trump dominating the political landscape, I’ve noticed how one particular issue completely clouds the judgment of Trump supporters to an unreasonable extent. That issue is abortion. For opponents of abortion there is no more important issue than ending abortion on demand, and all other issues and politicians are subordinate to it.

The Bible itself is fairly silent on the matter of abortion. Yes, there are a few passages that refer to God knowing a person before they are born. But that is really as far as it goes. There are other passages that go in the direction of indicating that the unborn baby is not a person in the fullest sense. In Exodus 21:22-25, there is a law where a person causing a woman to miscarry by striking her doesn’t receive the death penalty as is the case for all other instances when a person kills another person. Instead the punishment is a fine to make up for the loss of property. In Numbers 5:11-31, a wife is accused by her husband of having adultery. In order to prove her innocence she is required to ordeal the trial of the bitters. She must drink a brew and if a miscarriage is triggered, than the wife is guilty, and if no miscarriage occurs than the wife is innocent of the accusations. Neither of these stories/laws are ringing endorsements of personhood from conception.

I want to say up front though that I don’t think any of these passages give us insight into the morality of abortion or whether it should be legal. There certainly are interpretations of the preceding verses that support the position of abortion opponents. At the very least though what this should communicate to us is that we don’t get a straightforward answer on abortion from scripture. To foist one understanding on all people, regardless of what they believe, is not fair to them.

I for one do not find abortion to be a positive good for society and I don’t think it’s good for Democrats to engage in celebrating it. At the same time those who need to resort to abortion should not be shamed either. It ought to be treated primarily in society as a medical issue and a personal ethical choice. But instead abortion opponents support a party that believes in cutting taxes to benefit the wealthy, while cutting spending and refusing to endorse programs that would aid those people who most need the assistance to provide an alternative to getting abortions.

The Bible is far more clear on caring for the poor, widows, orphans, and foreigners. Those who are outside and in the margins of society. The lease of these, if you will. There is no doubt whose side God is on there. Opposition to abortion completely warps this perspective though.

Simply put, at least part of the reason that Trump is president again, is because of abortion derangement syndrome.

One of the things I want to use this blog for is documenting my thoughts and feelings over the next four years of the Trump presidency. Obviously there is much to be uncertain of as we ultimately don’t know what he is going to do. As Matt Yglesias has pointed out in his latest newsletter at Slow Boring Trump is a liar and his followers know he is a liar and that is part of the reason they like him. I think that a lot of his policies will be bad for the economy and our civic culture. But I’m also concerned as someone who serves in the military with his foreign policy and how that will impact my life and the life of my family.

Today he is expected to sign close to or more than 100 executive orders. Doing everything from declaring national emergencies at the border and energy to changing the names of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and Mt. Denali to Mt. McKinley. Makes me think of Governors of Maine LePage and Mills trading over what the sign at the border of Maine and New Hampshire on I-95 says. Thankfully he also clarified for everyone that there are only two genders, male and female (hopefully the sarcasm there can be detected). The big item that the news media seems to be taking is Trump saying that his inauguration brings to end a period of American decline.

I should say up front that my biggest concerns are less about Trump making himself into an authoriatrian dictator, and more that our political institutions will corrupt from within and the free culture that we have known that is based on our political system will slowly deteriorate. Granted that this has been happening off and on for a while, having a bunch of very rich dudes able to basically manipulate our system with money, while others exploit the people seems like a recipe for disaster. Oligarchy combined with kleptocracy is how many republics have met their fate. Hopefully by keeping our eyes open and thinking through what is happening we can arrest the rot that threatens to overwhelm the system.

That being said, I don’t think this has to mean the end of the American experiment in self-governance. This country has gone through many dark periods in the past and I see no reason why it could not emerge from this as well. I also don’t want to just offer up cynical takes either and disparage everything the new administration does. I want to tell the truth as I see it with full honesty. That is what any thinking person ought to offer at this time where there will be so much lying and deceit.